Never mind that he probably didn’t deserve their honor–they knew what kind of man he was: arrogant, color-struck, snobbish. They didn’t care about that. They were paying their respect to whatever it was that made him be a doctor in the first place, when the odds were that he’d be a yardman all of his life.
Is this why we respect presidents, celebrities, authors and athletes when their morals are questionable? We respect how they made something of themselves, when circumstances stood in their way at every turn.
